


[Insert Sarcasm Here]

by ThunderBot



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Awkward Romance, Cussing, Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-08-10 20:13:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderBot/pseuds/ThunderBot
Summary: MacCready is at his wit's end. Gunners are hunting him, and his goal seems furhter away than ever. That is when a stranger shows up, a woman he can't quite figure out. Will she be his end, or will she be his salvation?





	1. The Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing this while figuring out how I wanted to roleplay my charater in Fallout 4. I thought it might be fun to share :)
> 
> Just keep in mind that English isn't my first language - just so you're not overly disappointed over grammar errors and such. I write for the sake of practice, and don't mind some critique though.
> 
> Oh, and there can be long pauses between updates. Sorry.
> 
> /ThunderBot

Winlock and Barnes.So they found him after all. He should give them some creds for the effort, but he was not in a charitable mood.  
“Fucking cu… idiots.” MacCready threw himself back into the old, sagging armchair with a grunt and almost wished that he would continue sinking through it forever. Just almost. He lit a cigarette as his gaze followed the backs of the two Gunners as they left the VIP section. His hands were shaking, didn’t get the flip-lighter to generate a flare until the third try. This situation was getting… well, shittier than expected, that’s for sure. If it was up to him…  
MacCready inhaled that first draw of smoke, held it in his lungs for a moment before he exhaled.  
It didn’t matter, it really didn’t matter.  
Well, Duncan…  
Yeah, Duncan had been MacCready’s reason so far, but… It was probably too late anyway and he was just pushing the inevitable forward. A deathclaw. Uphill. In a rainstorm. Fucking hilarious. He needed to get high, drunk or laid and then make some decisions.  
High. Not that fond of losing control. Let’s just cross that suggestion out and pretend it never was mentioned.  
Drunk.  
“Huh, ahead of you there”, he muttered with a quick glance at the half-empty whiskey bottle on the floor beside him. If it wasn’t so watered down, he would have been there already. He put the cigarette to his lips again, filled his mouth with the warm smoke and inhaled deeply. Ah. Like a soothing blanket. A brief moment of focus as his thoughts lined up properly and his fluttering nerves were laid to rest. Yeah, stay in line and everything’ll be a-oh-fucking-kay.  
Laid, by the way.  
Without caps? Not likely. At least not in Goodneighbor. He stared at the ember at the tip of his cigarette, watched the ash grow into a fragile tower, followed with his eyes the swirls of smoke dancing towards the ceiling. His hand did an unintentional sweep over his backpack beside him in the chair. Could feel the contour of that small wooden figure through the fabric.  
Everything would have been so much easier if she had been here - his main girl. Some of these stupid choices he’d made… It was all on himself. She used to be the brains in the group.  
So. Drunk. Soon enough, hopefully. One out of three - at least something. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Whether it would be better or not to push daisies instead. He had a bullet with his name on it. Eh, pretty much anyway - always saved at least one for that rainy day that eventually would come.  
Or...  
MacCready snickered to himself as an alternate ending to his miserable existence took form in his head. Winlock and Barnes. He could take a chance; to be honest, he didn’t have anything left to lose. Yeah. Going out with his middle finger lifted and a loud…  
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of boots against the floor, a steady thump heading through the corridor outside the VIP lounge in his direction. Not a loud stomp; someone with remarkably light feet for the usual pub dweller; enough to have him startled. MacCready put the cigarette between his lips and reached for the bottle of whiskey, squinting through the smoke towards the open door on the other side of the room. Not sure if he should have aimed for his rifle instead, but the newsflash Winlock had served him established that as long as he stayed in Goodneighbor, no one could touch him.  
The silhouette of a tall slender person in the murk; backlight from the bar making it hard to distinguish anything but shadows. He would always recognize the bulk of armor, though. MacCready realized it was a woman when she entered the room and blinked towards the light. Still tall, or maybe it was her proud stature that made him believe so. He could only see what was obvious though - her face was covered with a green bandana and she wore one of those ancient army helmets from… well, long before the war. It was just too new, too clean. As a matter of fact, the entire woman was too clean. Matte black, rather sturdy looking combat armor over army fatigues. This first impression alarmed him at first - another Gunner? With the rifle casually hanging from her shoulder she sure looked the part at a first glance.  
The brim of the old army helmet shaded her forehead; he couldn’t see if her blood type was tattooed over her left eye. Well, if she was a newer recruit, just like himself, she might not have the tattoo yet, but that spoke against the gear she was carrying.  
Nah. MacCready exhaled slowly when his logic took over. Relieved, really - but because of his own reaction - suspiciously eyeing her. Lined up all the reasons why she couldn’t be one of Winlock’s or Barne’s goons:  
The armor. Firstly, because that kind of armor was earned through climbing the ranks, which took time within the Gunners. That meant he would have met her before.  
Not a chance. She was so different from everything he knew that he would have remembered.  
Secondly, if he returned to the armor: it was black, way too untarnished and seemed muffled. Her weapon of choice had him confused. It looked like an assault rifle, which indeed was the preferred rifle among higher ranking Gunners officers, but hers was modified almost beyond recognition. Suppressed, fitted with an advanced receiver and a large night vision scope. Not a modification he’d seen around before, and he suspected it would be heavy to aim, but he was at least certain of one thing: she was a sniper, just like himself. Among Gunners, not a common breed. They had been hiring sharpshooters when…  
No, he didn’t even want to think about that. Anyway, he would have recognized her if she’d been one of them.  
Unless they had decided to hire a freelancer to take him out, of course. She looked like the mercenary type, only with more expensive gadgets.  
Well, with the right questions, he might find out.  
“Look pal. If you’re preaching about the Atom or looking for a friend, you’ve got the wrong guy”, he muttered. He didn’t dare to talk shop, not just yet.  
Their eyes met as she stopped just inside the door. An irritated crease took shape between her eyebrows. she grunted in response and held up a bottle of vodka.  
“Yeah…” She eyed him up and down quickly before she continued. “Um, kid. I’m not here for an evening of light entertainment, alright? I’ve had a hell of a night and it’s raining fucking popsicles outside. All I want is to crawl into this bottle and drown without further interruption. Are we clear?” A raspy voice and a strange accent, every word properly articulated. Well, not strange per se, she sounded like an actor from one of those old radio shows. She glared at him with a pair of piercing eyes. Maybe it was all that smudged black guck around them that made them look intense; a stark contrast against those light gray irises.  
“Kid?” MacCready repeated quizzically before he shook his head and looked away. “Sure, whatever.”  
What the… Kid?! He glanced discreetly in her direction as he opened his bottle with one hand and lifted it to his lips. She could be well kept for her age, of course, difficult to say really when she kept her face covered like that. And with those gadgets… A mercenary with some years on his - or her - back could afford it. The big question: was her attitude a clever ruse to make him drop his guard, or was this stranger really here just for a drink in peace and quiet? He kept studying her, uncertain of what to make out of her, but without straight out staring.  
She plopped down into the red couch across the room with a sigh, but her eyes widened in surprise when she kept sinking into the cushions as if the piece of furniture was trying to swallow her whole. An involuntary flap with her arms as if to regain balance, a gasp accompanied by the sound of springs giving away under the weight of her body became the perfect background music for the muffled cacophony of voices and singing from the bar. MacCready swallowed a large gulp of whiskey while trying to keep himself from laughing out loud, ended up choking on it and coughed.  
Hah, she was only human. A clean, probably rather dangerous one, but still - her shit smelled bad, just like everybody else's.  
The woman didn’t seem to care. Or maybe she did, just tried to save her face by looking casual. Dropped a tattered old messenger bag and her rifle on the floor by her feet before she leaned backwards against the backrest and closed her eyes with a sturdy grip around the white bottle of vodka.  
Right. Rough night. Maybe that was true. What made her so sure though that Goodneighbor would be the place to unwind? Only a select few would see this as a good choice, and she didn’t look like that kind of people. Remarkably clean - he had to emphasize that - the armor almost new (or very well-kept), and the way she spoke. Sure, some curses here and there, but other than that her language was just like her cover; proper.  
Fuck.  
If Hancock had made a deal with another mercenary… Damn it, he better not have - just look at her! The emballage sold the product, and if the choice stood between him and her, she would be everybody’s first choice whether she was the better shot or not. She looked like fucking business.  
Calm down. Don’t make hasty conclusions, RJ.  
Maybe she was just staying out of the rain - just like she said. In MacCready’s mind probably the only reason to get a drink in a shithole like this, anyway. It was January, which meant cold and wet to the core. The whiskey helped, at least from the inside.  
The woman across the room seemed to share his opinion. Shuddered, sat up again, rubbed her hands together with a hiss before she opened her white bottle. She pulled the bandana down from her face to drink, and it wasn’t until then MacCready got a glimpse of her face. He couldn’t help but being somewhat curious; she could be anything from his next meal ticket to his last words.  
And sure, she could maybe be older than him, but not nearly by enough to call him ‘kid’. In fact, her skin was way too smooth, at least from where he was sitting. She was probably even younger than him. And as curiosity had him captured, he kept studying that face. Still not somebody he recognized; pale skin, a pointy chin and high cheekbones. A bit too skeletal for his taste; unconventional but not bad, he figured, but she would probably have looked better with some meat on those bones and if she hadn’t had that sullen look on her face.  
Although maybe he would dare to try the waters. See what happened. With a little luck, she was what he needed the most: a possible paying customer. With less luck, she was the bullet to his head, and to be honest he didn’t have much of a problem with that. He would have preferred going out with a boom, but fate had a tendency to fart in his face.  
MacCready leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, decided to try a friendlier approach. “Rough night, huh?”  
The woman swallowed, hissed and turned her head to look at him while screwing back the lid on the bottle. The room went silent for a second before she spoke.  
“Please don’t tell me you’re a slipping twelve-step”, she grunted and rolled her eyes. “Look, Captain Obvious. I am not Bill W and I already know alcohol won’t solve my problems.”  
What the actual fuck was she talking about? Slipping Twelve-step? Bill W? MacCready snorted, mainly because he didn’t know how to react. The woman talked English alright, but the words she put together didn’t form sentences he understood. Except the last part of course, ‘alcohol won’t solve my problems’; he could even relate to that.  
“As far as I’m concerned, chemically, alcohol is a solution”, he replied with a smirk.  
Slipping Twelve-step, that sounded like a name. Maybe a gang under the Triggermen. Bill W, could that be one of Skinny Malone’s guys? What the hell?  
While those thoughts ran around like radroaches in his head, the woman chuckled and offered him an askew grin. Two rows of of perfect white teeth. “Heh, you’re not as dumb as you look, kid.”  
“And you’re not as ugly as you seem”, MacCready said before he had a chance to think that sentence through. A badly camouflaged compliment that was more true than he wanted to admit. When she smiled, even though the expression didn’t reach through to her eyes, she was actually kind of attractive. Well, slightly undernourished, but still.  
Damn it, RJ, don’t let a pretty face fool you. As long as you don’t know what she wants she’s either hunter or prey.  
“Not as ugly as I seem, huh? Yeah, sure.” She was still smiling, but broke their eye contact to study her nails. “Blah, blah, blah; insert sarcasm here.”  
That was when MacCready noticed the big, clunky thing on her wrist. If he hadn’t been so stupid, he would have seen it straight away.  
A pip-boy? Damn, this woman had expensive toys! And expensive toys meant expensive habits, and expensive habits meant lots of caps...  
Or, she was a vault dweller.  
Nah, they usually appeared like they were born yesterday.  
A common thief or scavenger, maybe?  
Bah, common - not looking like that.  
“I see your sarcasm and raise you with a witty comeback”, he said, just to keep the dialogue going while he tried to decrypt her. Get an idea of what was moving around inside that head of hers.  
“Hah. I see your comeback and raise you with a humorous remark.” Her smile was still just plastered on the surface, but something in their dialogue had caught her attention. She was eyeing him curiously, and with those piercing eyes....  
Yeah, she really was attractive when she smiled.  
Which wasn’t of any importance at all. RJ, don’t get sidetracked here. Keep talking to her, for fucks sake, she might be your next paycheck.  
MacCready shook his head and snickered. “Humorous? I call your bluff and raise you with irony.”  
The woman frowned. “Damn it. I need to get my poker-face sorted.”  
“Yeah…” Weird. He usually figured people out quite easily, but this... Sure, she was a little strange, but not enough by his book to have stumbled out of a vault. She appeared somewhat relaxed even though nothing in this world made sense - as if she belonged out here under the sun. Or clouds, if one was to be precise. Anyway, not like she’d been spending her entire life underground. Vault dwellers - and MacCready had met a few - always showed a strange but relatable fear of open spaces and they had a tendency to take everything one said a bit too serious. Trusting and naïve like children.  
Ah.  
The Third Rail was below ground level.  
So. How to rule this out? If she was a Gunner or a mercenary, there was by now only one way to find out.  
“Yeah”, he repeated a little slower before he added: “If you need a hand with that ‘rough night’ of yours - 250 caps, upfront, and I’m all yours.”  
“Huh. Prostitute with a rifle?” She studied his face scrutinously (at least it felt so, her intense eyes made him feel like she could see right through him and read his very soul) as she put the vodka bottle to her lips and drank.  
“Well, aren’t we all”, MacCready muttered - relieved, and at the same time disturbed. He was already regretting his offer. She didn’t know who he was, and that was a good thing, but she did apparently not think highly of mercenaries either. He felt like a bug under a loupe.  
Well, honestly, who liked mercenaries?  
“Hm. Yeah, I guess.” The woman cleared her throat, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and gave him another judging look. “Hey, kid. I appreciate your offer and all, but… look, I don’t mean to offend, but aren’t you a bit young to be a mercenary?”  
MacCready scowled. “I’m not that young.” What the actual…? Who was she to…?  
“Right.” She inhaled and paused. “Don’t take me wrong, but for some reason I doubt you’re the kind of guy who moisturizes.”  
“Moisturizing, what the…ow, damn it!” MacCready realized a bit too late that he completely had forgotten about his lit cigarette; was reminded of it when the ember touched his fingers. He stubbed out the short stump that was left - violently, as if a cigarette would understand vendetta - and lit a new one. He gave the knuckles on his middle- and index finger a quick rub and brushed away the remaining ash from the chair’s armrest. “Look, lady: you either learn young or you die young, alright?”  
“You claim that, but how can I trust you? What says you won’t stab me in the back as soon as a better offer arrives?”  
“And how do I know I don’t end up with one of your bullets in my head?” MacCready snickered and shook his head. “That’s the Commonwealth for you, lady. Get over it.”  
Well, she wasn’t completely clueless, but at the same time he didn’t like her attitude. She didn’t take him seriously and was pointing that out over and over.  
The woman sighed. “Alright. Sure. I’m not one to buy the pig in the poke however. I can give you a hundred caps upfront, and you can consider it payment for a week’s probationary period. If you’re as good as you say you are…” She didn’t end the sentence, but he understood what she meant. She just shrugged while her left hand leaped into a pocket on her right arm and hoisted up a crumpled pack of Grey Tortoise. Didn’t need two hands to get a cigarette out of the package or to light it. Every motion looked habitual, almost automatic. Inhaled, blew a couple of smoke rings before she exhaled; all while keeping him under that loupe of hers.  
Damn it, she drove a hard bargain, but at the end of the week there was a promise. She might not see it, but he knew. With a rifle in his hand he was better than most. A hundred caps for one week’s work though… He didn’t know anything about her, she might be dead before that week was up. She looked kind of scrawny, which would mean that every day was a close balance on a thin edge.  
But it wasn’t like there was a line of people who wanted to hire him either - not since it got out that he used to have ties with the Gunners. This latest visit from Winlock and Barnes would hardly make it any easier. It was degrading to drop that much on the price and he really needed the caps. MacCready shrugged and scratched his chin, realized that he needed a shave. “Suit yourself. You know where to find me if you change your mind.”  
The woman snickered and leaned back into the couch with a saucy smirk and her chin lifted, squinted at him through the smoke. “Yeah, whatever. You look like you need the caps more than I need your service, buddy.”  
“Hrmph.” Crap. She was probably right.


	2. The Silver Shroud

About a week later, he woke up sweaty and panting in the middle of the night. Like so many nights before - nothing special so far. As always, just a vague memory of the nightmare that had stirred him up, but the images it had drawn to the surface were as fresh as if it all had happened yesterday. MacCready sat up and reached for his duster, hands shaking uncontrollably when he ruffled through the pockets for the pack of cigarettes.   
Fuck. Only three left.  
Winlock and Barnes. Their sudden appearance had kickstarted all of it. Damn it, he didn’t need to be reminded. Joining them had been one of his worst decisions ever, for so many reasons...   
He managed to light a cigarette, but that soothing effect he had expected didn’t happen. The view from that overpass - it was like glued to the insides of his eyelids when he closed his eyes in an attempt to shut it all out. Women and children being gunned down - the moment he realized that he couldn’t do it and ran.   
MacCready inhaled the smoke greedily, waited for his heart to stop racing in his chest.  
Damn it.  
Lucy and Duncan, it was their fault. He couldn’t erase their faces from his mind even for a moment, not even for that large amount of caps. The guilt; he would never have felt like that if he’d never met Lucy again, if Duncan hadn’t been born. With that money he could have paid someone to tag along, someone to watch his back, take those ferals down with ease. With Sinclair out of the picture, he didn’t have much of a choice.  
Someone who didn’t freeze up at the sight of ghouls would be to prefer.  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” MacCready slapped his forehead over and over again. As if that would make him forget. He had left, but he could have done more. If he’d known how his conscience would haunt him, he would have.  
And probably not survived.  
He could always have done more, that was the problem. Just like before, he ended up running.   
Fucking Coward.  
He needed some air. Reached for the cargo pants on the floor, put them on,  
Skipped the shirt. Too sweaty. His tank top was soaked. MacCready stubbed his first cigarette out and lit a second before he stood up from the bed and walked towards the door of his room. Left the duster and his hat hanging on the bedpost, but felt naked without the rifle, so he turned around, grabbed it and hung it over his shoulder.  
In an instance his pulse went down.  
Still felt cramped, needed to get out, just to breathe. Staying cooped up in this murky old hotel room wouldn’t make things better, the scent of mold made him feel trapped. Like deep underground, too much like back in the day. Too worked up to fall asleep again, almost afraid of what might embrace him in his dreams if he did, he left the room in a rush.  
His feet led him downstairs to the lobby - well, they must have; he reached there, but couldn’t recall how he got there. He would probably not have noticed going out either, just kept walking, if something hadn’t startled him out of his trance.   
A voice. It wasn’t really what had been said, but how it was pronounced. Before he really listened, it was just a raspy blur, but that articulation, a discrete (but hard to miss) rolling ‘R’…  
“...that even you’d think twice about huffing, Fred.”  
MacCready stopped, just by the door with his hand resting on the handle. Breathing. The picture of an angular face and a pair of grey eyes surrounded by black muck. He remembered that voice. He remembered that smile, even though it never reached further than her lips.  
Damn it.  
He should have said yes. A hundred caps. That was at least more than no caps at all. And maybe, just maybe… No, the package sold the product - he couldn’t afford her.  
“That so?” Fred’s voice. The rather shady hotel worker didn’t sound convinced, which ensued a stupid experiment like so many times before. Fucking junkie. What was his purpose here anyway? He used as many chems as he produced.  
“Far out”, he continued with that lingering, slightly distant minded tone.   
McCready turned around. Fred seemed high as usual, his grey hair in an oily mess under his hat, and the woman he was talking to…  
MacCready could only see her back. Still dressed in black, but something was...  
Wait. That couldn’t be her. It sounded like her, but…  
MacCready took a step back into the room, eyeing the tall woman curiously. It had to be her, she was just… The same proud posture, although without the bulk of armor; the assault rifle casually hanging from her shoulder. Yup, he’d recognize that heavy weapon from a mile away. Silenced and scoped.  
But her clothes, what was this - a costume party? Black and silver, a trench coat and fedora. Just like...  
Fred grinned, that abstracted look on his face that could make MacCready furious under normal circumstances. “Can’t wait to break this down in the lab. Here’s your payment.” Apparently the idiot could muster up enough focus to notice her costume; he paused and winked. “In full. As promised, Shroud.”  
Caps moved from one owner to the other with a muffled clatter.  
Shroud?  
Damn it. He’d heard the talk in the streets, heard something about a radio channel. Was that her?  
And that was when she turned around. MacCready felt his stomach flip when he realized that he’d been staring. Apart from Fred and her, he was the only other person in the room, so pretending he hadn’t seen her wouldn’t be appropriate.   
She would notice.   
Did it matter?  
Nope.  
He was just about to spin on his heels and leave when she looked up and their eyes met across the lobby. Even though her face was covered with yet another bandana - this one black with a skull on it - he recognized her. Those piercing eyes, shadowed by the brim of her hat. MacCready froze. A Gunner bandana. Maybe he’d been right in his assumptions after all...  
He cleared his throat, managed to collect himself enough to break the silence. “You’re a bit late for Halloween. Or did I miss something?”  
The woman just stared back at him for a short moment, then she snickered. “Ah, it’s you. Captain Obvious! Hardly recognized you with your clothes on…”  
“Oh.” Fred’s eyes darted back and forth between MacCready and the woman, then he snickered. “Awkward. I’m just gonna go…”   
Ah. There he scurried away down the stairs towards the basement. Fred, the biggest gossip in all of Goodneighbor, maybe even the world. Nice. Just nice. Let’s just hope he was high enough to forget about that little hiccup. Daisy would be thrilled, ask MacCready questions about the ‘lucky lady’ and he’d have to disappoint her yet again. Yes, he was aware of the fact that it had been three years, he counted the days. Yes, he knew he still had his whole life ahead of him, but the only person he wanted to share that life with was gone. Sure, the occasional acquaintance was hardly frowned upon, but something stretching past breakfast? Nope. Not a fucking chance.  
He’d have to tell Daisy that Fred had smoked himself retarded or something.  
“‘With your clothes on’, damn it, that’s not what I meant.” The woman grunted and rolled her eyes and looked away with a nervous snicker.  
Was there actually something that could stir that woman’s confidence? Huh. Difficult to see in the dim light and with that bandana… Interesting though; she wasn’t some ice queen. Well, she had only melted a little on the surface, apparently, because she was soon enough her cold self.  
“Hey, kid. Not to be a cunt or anything, but you look like crap”, she added after giving him another focused stare. A little too much of it there, as if she was trying to contradict herself on purpose.  
Now, of course Maccready understood what she meant by that, but with that little hint of insecurity in mind he couldn’t help but teasing her.   
“I look like crap?” MacCready frowned in pretended offence. “Thanks for your honesty. I don’t have enough middle fingers to spare you one right now. You’ll have to come back later.”  
She snickered, crossed her arms and looked down at her feet. And now it was confirmed. That woman was a human after all. “Flogging clusterfuck, that’s not what…”  
MacCready burst into laughter, and not because he thought that he had figured her out, but because of her choice of words. These curses she threw around her like seeds in the wind, what the actual… The words seemed to roll out of her mouth without an effort, but the contrast… It didn’t go well together with her proper exterior, especially not now when dressed like some classy female version of… well, the Silver Shroud. And that look on her face! Well, the part he could see anyway - just priceless! That cocky woman he’d met a couple of days earlier at The Third Rail was… well, he never thought he’d see her confidence crippled, it was easier than expected.  
She lifted her chin again and gave him a surprised look; eyes widened and brows raised. Then she grunted and made a wide gesture with her arms. “Tact is for people who aren’t witty enough to be sarcastic, am I right?” Her normal cocky posture returned to her slowly. “I meant it like ‘you look like you could use a drink’, but you already knew that.”  
“Yeah, alcohol won’t solve my problems”, he muttered, but noticed at the same time that he already felt much calmer. For some reason, talking to her made his brain work along other paths - he enjoyed talking to her. Obviously, because her remarks were both logic and strange; she was another one of those oddities that this world presented.  
“Won’t solve your problems, huh?” The woman inhaled, then paused before one of her eyebrows rose. “Well, chemically, alcohol is a solution…”  
Yeah, just like that. She reused his own comment, and even though or just because of the sarcasm in her tone and their earlier conversation, it became a joke. MacCready snorted. “My main problem being that my wallet is in my other pants”, he pointed out with a gesture towards his rather haphazardly dressed state.  
“Yeah, and you have to brush your hair, watch old reruns of some ancient soap opera recorded on holotapes, water the plants and have your nails done… Look, if you don’t want to go out for a drink with me, just say so, kid. I’m not fluent in Subtle Hints.”  
Refreshing. Not at all that irritable and torn down woman he’d met the other night.  
“With your vocabulary? I’m surprised.” He studied her curiously. The sadness in her eyes was gone, but she looked tired. That hat gave her a rather dramatic look though, it suited her.   
So, this was the Shroud. A scrawny woman with a fistful of attitude. How on Earth did she manage to convince anyone that she really was the old comic-book hero come to life? She didn’t look anything like him. Too… well, female, for starters.  
“Har-dee-har har - surprised, my ass.” She rolled her eyes and began to walk across the room towards him. “I need a shot of scotch, you either tag along or you don’t.” She gave him a long look as she passed him and steered towards the door. “I know, it’s past your bed time, baby, but I’m sure Whitey can serve you a soda or something if you promise to behave.” One of her eyebrows rose before she dropped eye contact and opened the door.  
Back to the age jokes, huh?   
Damn, a little meat on those bones and she would be a total killer, and she apparently knew that too.   
Come on, R.J. That’s irrelevant. Caps, that’s what she is to you. Keep it professional.  
He cleared his throat. “Very funny. Maybe we should fetch your walker on the way?”   
...And his dignity, his last cigarette… Damn it. MacCready scratched his chin with the raspy sound of five-o-clock shadow against his nails before he caught the door over her shoulder as she walked outside. That was when he became aware of something rather peculiar. The woman: she was just about his own height. Now, he wasn’t a tall man, but for a woman, that was still above average; he had, though, been under the distinct impression that she was towering over him.  
“Walker? She snickered, completely unaware of his discovery. “I’m way past that. My wheelchair is parked in the handicap parking space just outside.”  
The cool air was like a fresh breeze against MacCready’s skin. Not as cold nor as wet as he’d expected and it carried the sounds of a calm Goodneighbor night; an echo of song from the Third Rail, drifters laughing over their games of cards by the fires. A lovely evening, was it not for the stench of piss and vomit. MacCready followed the woman outside and the door closed behind his back.   
“Smart. A wheelchair on crawling distance”, he murmured, as if he would disturb the peace if he spoke too loudly. He stopped, looked up towards the stars. Not a single cloud against the pitch black sky. “Perfect after a drink or seven. Wish I had thought of that.”  
“Heh, drunk crawling.” The woman, who had kept walking, was already a couple of steps ahead. “You should have seen my uncles on our family gatherings. They made drunk crawling into an artform.” She turned her head and glanced at him over her shoulder. “Still hold the world record I believe.”  
MacCready grinned. “So, what are you saying? That it’s time to break their record?”  
“What, as long as I’m paying, is that it?” The woman snorted and took the turn around the corner of the Old State House, apparently heading towards the Third Rail. MacCready jogged up by her side.  
“You did promise a soda before bedtime”, he pointed out, which was responded with a sonorous laughter that echoed between the houses.  
“Damn it, kid. I think I’m beginning to like you”, the woman purred with amusement in her voice, “Stop whatever it is you’re doing, right away. I really don’t need someone to care about right now, alright?”  
What kind of a statement was that, and how to respond?  
“Um, I’m sorry?” MacCready furrowed his eyebrows. “I promise to never do that again?”  
The woman opened the door to The Third Rail and held it. “Yeah, thanks. That would be great”, she said. MacCready just shook his head as he passed her inside. 

They found a secluded table and a waitress took their order. A bottle of something MacCready didn’t catch the name of and two shot glasses. When the girl returned and the woman across the table opened the bottle and filled the two glasses to the brim, he realized that the reason why he couldn’t figure out what the woman had ordered was because of the actual name of the whiskey. Trying to pronounce that many vowels and H’s in a row would be more than a tongue twister. Imported, well aged and by that expensive. Yup, this one could be the payday he needed to stay afloat.  
“OK, now we’re here.” MacCready lifted his shot glass of whiskey and gave the woman across the table a suspicious glare. “I get the feeling this…” he made a gesture towards the rather extravagant whiskey standing on the table between them, “is not from the kindness of your heart.”  
“Am I really that transparent?” The woman winked, and lifted her glass too. “Sure, let’s drink to that.” She pulled the bandana down from her face and put the glass to her lips, emptied it in one mouthful, swallowed and hissed. Before she spoke again, she slammed the glass on the table top.  
“Well, to be perfectly honest, you’re right”, she added hoarsely. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”  
MacCready just stared at her, still with his glass lifted. “Lowball offers are declined.”  
“Yeah, I’m aware.” The woman reached for the whiskey bottle and poured herself another glass. “I’ve done some background investigations, however…”  
Damn it. MacCready decided to follow her example and emptied his glass in one big gulp. Its yellow contents burned in his mouth and throat, a bitter aftertaste of smoke remaining on his numb tongue when he gasped for air. This was not the usual watered down crap, that’s for sure. A comfortable warmth was beginning to spread from his belly when he put down the glass on the table.  
“Yeah?” he hissed, hoped that he sounded just as uninterested as he pretended to.  
“You’ve made a pretty decent name for yourself, MacCready.” She refilled his glass too, didn’t seem to notice how MacCready was about to jump out of his own skin from surprise. She knew his name.  
“Just one little smudge in that ledger, kid”, she continued and placed the bottle between them again.  
“Fu…” MacCready bit his jaws together and kept the curses to himself. “Winlock and Barnes. They are just that; a smudge and nothing more.”  
“I don’t give a damn about either your walk of shame or how inadequate that affair was”, the woman grunted and rolled her eyes, “what I’m interested in is our equal guilt and needs.”  
“Equal guilt and needs, what the…” Did she know more than he wanted her to? Was this blackmail? In that case, she was being very unclear. And contradictory.  
“Yes, We’re both guilty of things we don’t want to discuss, and because of that we both need someone to watch our back”, she continued and looked him straight in the eyes. “You have the Gunners hounding after you, I have the Operators and the Pack at my tail.”  
Operators? Pack? Gangs, from the sound of it, but affiliated with whom? Sounded a lot like Triggermen. So, Bill W and the Twelve Steps had something to do with that after all. Still, he couldn't get what she was aiming at. It made him rather nervous, a feeling that was slightly dulled by the warm fuzz of spirits spreading in his limbs. “Get to the point.”  
“Alright.” The woman sighed. “I have two hundred and fifty caps here that could be yours - up front as you want it - under one condition. I’m buying your silence rather than your service, because we are in equal need of an extra pair of eyes.”  
Two hundred and fifty. That was the amount of caps he’d asked for from the beginning, and for some reason her speech made him feel like he should have asked for more. “I don’t know anything about you”, he objected, “you don’t even have a name.”  
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The woman offered him an askew smile and lifted her chin with a rather defiant glint in her eyes.  
“Yeah, sure.” MacCready frowned to hold back a frustrated curse. “You’re a Capulet and I shall call you ‘Love’ apparently.”  
The woman snickered and nodded appreciatively. “You’re literate!”  
“Shakespeare’s common knowledge, lady, why act so surprised?” Yeah, well, maybe he’d picked some stuff up in Little Lamplight that others in this desolate world had missed. The abundance of school books from before the war had always given them some leverage against the Big World Outside, but he never thought he’d make use of quotes from Romeo and Juliet.   
The woman leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table while studying his face rather curiously. “Alright, fair should be fair. As long as you’re MacCready, I’m Gale. When I know your first name, I’ll give you mine.”  
“Gale.” MacCready nodded. “Alright, but we won’t have a deal until I know how well you handle yourself.”  
“Sure.” Gale grabbed her glass. “Drink up, we’re off to the shooting range.”  
Shooting range? There was no such thing… Ah. She had a target alright; live and moving. Supermutants? Mirelurks? Her form of target practice was hardly a good idea though at this time of night. MacCready frowned. “What, now? Haven't you noticed that it’s dark outside?”  
“Yeah? You can’t sleep, I can’t sleep, so I figured…”  
“...now’s as good a time as any.” MacCready sighed and grabbed his glass too. “Cheers.”  
Gale stood up and walked up to the bar while pulling up the bandana over her face. MacCready drank up and followed her.  
“Whitey.” Gale slammed one hand on the bar top. The robot serving drinks didn’t turn to her at first, busy as he was cleaning a couple of glasses.  
“Make way for paying customers.” All three of Whitechapel Charlie’s googly eyes finally zoomed in on the woman, one by one. “Oh, it’s you. Why are you wearing that outfit, you look like one of them wankers from the posters.”  
Gale cleared her throat, but when she began to speak, MacCready wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or cry. She couldn’t be serious… Right?  
“You look upon… The Silver Shroud”, she said, with an altered voice and an overly dramatic tone. “I seek a miscreant named Kendra.”  
Whitey chuckled. “The Shroud then? More like a nutter…”  
Yeah, for now MacCready stayed silent and agreed. What was this he had gotten himself into?   
“Kendra is not one to be trifled with. People associated with her have a habit of being…” Whitey paused while searching for the right words. “Well, quite frankly, found face down in a ditch.” He paused again as his three eyes returned their focus to her. “If you’re set on meeting her, for a fee that can be arranged.”  
“It is not wise to stand between the Silver Shroud and righteous justice”, Gale replied and made a dramatic gesture with a raised fist.  
Oh, brother… If MacCready just backed away slowly… On the other hand, this might turn out amusing.  
Whitechapel Charlie chuckled. “Justice?” He chuckled again. “You mean to end her? In that case, her flat’s just south of Goodneighbor. Water Street Apartments.”  
Well, that was remarkably easy. If there was a way to gain an extra cap or two, Whitey seldom backed down.  
“Look out for the blighters she’s got with her. Nasty piece of business, that”, Whitey continued, “Good luck!”  
“What, all that info, just like that?” MacCready looked back and forth between the ‘Shroud’ and the bartender, a bit confused. He didn’t have time to figure this out though. A moment later, Gale was heading towards the exit.  
“You heard him”, she said over her shoulder, “get your coat, it’s hunting season. Oh, and bring our whiskey bottle. We might need it later.”


	3. Drinking games

The sun was rising outside when they returned through the doors to The Third Rail. It took a moment for MacCready’s eyes to adjust to the dim lights on the old subway station, and maybe that was why he got that remark from Whitechapel Charlie:  
“You’re back! Why the long face?”  
“What?” MacCready stopped and squinted towards the bar, while Gale passed him and took a seat in front of the robot bartender.  
“You look like a ghost, Mac”, White replied and chuckled. “Did someone die?”  
“Yeah…” MacCready slouched down into the closest chair; couldn’t even find the strength to walk all the way over to the bar. He heard the rest of Whitey’s and Gale’s conversation like a murmur in the background.  
What the actual fuck. This must have been one of the weirdest things he’d ever experienced. She couldn’t be serious, could she? That amount of insanity…  
His train of thought was interrupted by the woman, plopping down on the seat across the table.   
“So, um… Did I pass the test?” she wondered.  
“Test?” MacCready stared at her. “You go into a nest of wasps, but use nothing but a fu… a stupid kitchen knife…”  
“A desperate housewife in close quarters. You know how it is.” She leaned against the backrest of the chair and crossed her arms.  
“With the hip-fire accuracy on that rifle of yours, you shouldn’t be having any problems”, MacCready pointed out. Yeah, he was a bit shocked, that was true. The woman in front of him was a cypher he couldn’t crack. With a melee weapon in her hand she had fought like a Raider, but refined. Faster, from the shadows and completely silent. This was not the common mercenary’s handywork, and it made him slightly nervous. Gale was obviously an assassin, and if she was hired to kill him…  
Damn it, R.J, get your shit together. If she wanted you dead, you already would have been, let’s face the facts. You’re just being paranoid.  
And to be fair, she did get the job done.  
“Yeah…” Gale hissed and cleared her throat. “The thing is… Ammunition is expensive, alright? I shoot when I have to.”  
MacCready raised one eyebrow. She hardly looked like she was short on caps, but now was not the time to elaborate on that.   
“And what’s the deal with the outfit?” he asked instead, nodding towards her Silver Shroud costume.  
Gale snickered. “Fun, huh?”  
“You’re insane.” MacCready shook his head and sighed, not sure if he dared to be amused or not. He reached for his pack of cigarettes and the flip lighter. Found the pack and gave it a scrutinous glare. Only one left. Right. Damn it, he should have stopped by a cigarette machine while out of Goodneighbor. “I need a whiskey.”  
“A bit early for a drink, don’t you think?” Gale pointed out and lifted one eyebrow. “You left our whiskey bottle in your room before right? If it’s that important, we could return there...”   
“No, I’m good”, MacCready interrupted, suddenly very nervous. That woman in his room? Not a chance; he needed to keep her in crowded spaces, neutral grounds, not a place where he would be a target.  
Gale sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll buy this round, you take care of the next.”

About fifteen minutes later they sat down in the VIP-section at the back of the pub - where they’d first met. MacCready in his usual armchair and Gale sunken down into the couch across the room. New bottles, not the expensive stuff from before, and a rather disturbing tension in the air.   
“So...” Gale clapped her hands together. “Have you thought about my proposal?”  
MacCready grunted. “Yeah.” He scratched his neck and studied her carefully. Couldn’t figure out why she even talked to him; seemed competent enough on her own. She had mentioned some gangs he couldn’t even remember the names of, but from his point of view they were probably nothing she couldn’t handle. There was something she wasn’t telling him.   
On the other hand, he kept things to himself too. Maybe it was better to have her on his side. Maybe she was his only chance. Duncan’s chance.   
“Sure, we have a deal.” MacCready nodded slowly, not yet sure if he had made the right decision.  
“Nice.” The woman exhaled, as if she had been holding her breath while waiting for his response and pulled out a tattered lump of folded cloth from an inner pocket in her coat. She tossed it towards him across the room and it landed by his feet with a muffled rattle. “Your first payment, junior, and hopefully not the last. It should all be there, give or take.”  
Not the last?  
Oh.   
Just play along, R.J, just play along.  
“Give or take? That was not part of our agreement.” MacCready leaned forward and lifted the package of cloth, realized it was an old pillowcase when he unfolded it.  
“Two hundred and fifty caps - do you realise how boring it is to count that? My fingers are all scratched up from those rusty edges”, Gale muttered and looked away. “Count them yourself, if it’s so important, kid.”   
“And stop calling me ‘kid’, alright?” MacCready didn’t look up, just counted the caps inside of the pillow case. Sorted them in tens. It was all there, plus two.  
“Sure, sport.”  
MacCready could hear the laughter bubbling just under the surface, so he looked up and met her gaze. He noticed the taunting glow in her eyes and couldn’t hold back an askew grin. “You know my name.”  
Gale shook her head slowly. “Nuh-uh, I know your surname. People never call you by your first name?”  
“Don’t get too friendly, Mungo, don’t want your old to rub off on me”, MacCready replied with a smirk.  
The woman snorted. “I think cootie shots work against old too. I’ll offer you one if you begin to look like a prune, alright?”  
“Cootie shots?” MacCready shook his head, his thoughts trailing back to Little Lamplight. Cootie shots. Yeah, it was effective against pretty much everything according to some. “I think I’ll pass.”  
A pause, within which Gale reached for a white vodka bottle on the floor beside her feet. She opened the bottle and pulled the bandana down from her face, but instead of drinking, she began to tap nervously with her fingernails against the glass.   
“So, yeah. Never hired a mercenary before”, she suddenly said out of the blue. “No legal papers to be signed or anything? Insurance?”  
“You’re joking right?” MacCready refolded the pillowcase and put it in his pocket, “From now on, you point, I shoot. It’s as simple as that.”   
And hopefully she would keep her promise and watch his back too.  
“Oh. Yeah, of course.” She took her hat off and placed it gingerly beside her in the couch. Even her hair was neatly kept and properly combed. Sure, slightly ruffled from their little adventure, but still. Jet black. He hadn’t noticed before. Maybe because she kept it up. Without the hat keeping it all together though, long wavy tendrils fell down over her forehead and in comparison to her in other means neat appearance...   
MacCready reached for his cigarettes once more. Sighed, lit the last one in the pack and inhaled deeply as he leaned back into his chair without letting her out of sight. “Can’t say I’ve seen you around before.”   
Without the hat on her head, she really looked like a housewife - just like she had said before - as if she never knew violence. Nah, not a housewife, she reminded him more of those girls on the Nuka Cola- or Vim!-posters. Carefree, never hungry or unhappy. Well, not entirely, that somber gravity in her eyes…  
Ah. He suddenly got the costume, the act she had been playing, this restlessness - all of it. She wanted to forget, wanted to be somebody else. Just like himself.  
“Oh, I’ve been around.” she replied after a while. The unsettled tap of Gale’s fingernails on the vodka bottle had spread to her feet. A cocky grin when she met his glance, but it was just a mask.  
“I’ve been around for a really long time”, she added.  
MacCready lifted his empty whiskey bottle trying to hide a disturbing feeling of guilt behind a smile. For some reason, it felt like he was invading her personal space just from observing her. He couldn’t explain it; shouldn’t even feel like that. Why would he care, for that matter?  
“Well then. Let’s drink to new beginnings”, he said, and drank.  
Gale stopped her tapping and studied his face again (damn it, what was it now? A stain on his nose or something?), inhaled then spoke.  
“Let’s play a drinking game.”  
Well, why not. She was obviously too worked up to find peace, and so was he. He swallowed the watered down whiskey in his mouth, cleared his throat and nodded.  
“If it gets your mind off things…” MacCready replied after a short pause and grabbed the full bottle of Bourbon from the table beside him. This whiskey would hardly be enough.  
Gale didn’t answer, just got out of the couch as if there were springs under her feet. Paced quickly and almost soundlessly back and forth over the floor while explaining the rules.  
“Let’s say I start by stating ‘I have never played baseball’. You will then answer by drinking or not drinking. If you, in this case, never have played baseball, you’re safe. If you have, however, you must drink.” She stopped, straight in front of him. “Then it is your turn to make a statement and I will have to answer. Got it?”  
“Yeah” MacCready replied, even though he’d been more focused on trying to figure her out from how she walked and talked. Everything was so out of place. His own background shaped him into the man he was today, so what was her background - Gunner, Raider or… Synth? He couldn’t connect the dots.  
Not that these observations carried anything of value for the moment. With a grunt he brushed these non-essential notions away and opened the bottle of Bourbon. “Get on with it.”

MacCready lost track of time. If he could measure it in empty bottles, they’d been playing the game for quite a while, and he had reached that point when the nice buzz was making it difficult to speak and focus. He had moved from his chair to her couch, was lying in it with his crossed feet on one armrest and his head on the other. Eyelids heavy, every limb comfortably soft and warm, one arm resting over his face.   
Surprising really, how fast he settled back in Gale’s company. Wasn’t like him. He didn’t know anything about her - apart from these strange little truths she’d been sharing throughout their game - and still he felt like he could trust her.  
Which was even more contradictory, since she admitted to have been running with Raiders, just like he had expected. Thievery, kidnapping, forgery and vandalism sounded like innocent pranks when coming from her mouth, and in reality it wasn’t.   
So why didn’t he doubt her honesty?   
Well, they both had had a rather chequered career. He wasn’t innocent and to many of these statements they had shared a drink. But still, he never was this unsuspicious and maybe it should worry him.   
It didn’t.  
Gale sat on the floor beside him with her back against the couch and her head resting against his hip, a glowing cigarette hanging from her bottom lip. Strangely comforting, this innocent intimacy, but he had more than once been too close to touch her hair inattentively out of old habit. It felt like another time and another life, and still his hands remembered what it felt like.  
Lucy.  
And Gale was nothing like Lucy. Maybe that was for the best, everything that reminded him of Lucy felt like a dagger in his chest. Pure, honest and beautiful, that was how he’d always remember her, his main girl. Right now, numbed by the contents of the empty bottles on the floor around the couch, but the daggers were still there.  
“I have never… lost everything in a game of cards”, he murmured, concentrated to talk without a slur. It made him sound distant, as if he was about to fall asleep.  
When Gale lifted her head and grunted as a response to his statement though, the sting in his heart faded and he couldn’t hold back a snicker.   
“Seriously? Everything?”   
Gale gave him an unfocused glance and lifted the bottle. “College, too much wine, strip poker. I even lost my dignity. Cheers.”  
She drank from her white bottle; still on her first, but from the sound of the splashes inside of it, not for long.  
“College.” Another one of those things she mentioned that didn’t make any sense. MacCready cleared his throat. “Yeah, been meaning to ask: where are you from, Mars?”  
“Haveyouver…” Gale paused and swallowed. Began again with slightly better articulation and a focused expression on her face. “Have you ever been to Mars?”  
“No.” MacCready snorted and studied her profile, how the hairs in her neck were escaping the loose bun on the back of her head, noticed a thin scar across her right eyebrow which had been hidden behind her bang earlier. “I mean, of course not!”  
The corners of her mouth tilted upwards. “There you have it.”  
“Damn it, woman, tell me where you’re from”, MacCready jeered and gave her shoulder a playful punch. He would probably not dare to be this familiar with her under normal circumstances, but fuck that. “You glide away from the subject like a… like a twisty turny thing…”  
“A snake?” Gale turned her head and gave him an unfocused glance under heavy eyelids. “If you wanted to know, you could really just have asked. Concord. Born and raised.”  
“Concord?” He heard the surprise in his own voice and could understand why she smiled as a response; Concord was hardly a place for a child growing up; but she didn’t elaborate on the subject. “But your accent… Concord’s just a day’s walk from here”, he added, as if that would make any difference to the high amount of Raiders roaming that area. She had admitted ties to the Raiders, after all. Still rather confusing, she didn’t look like a Raider.  
“My accent?” She snickered and shook her head. “I thought you’d recognize… Doesn’t matter. Concord is...” She sighed and squinted while finding the words. “well, kind of like Goodneighbor, minus the walls, the charming mayor and this absolutely captivating smell of piss and vomit.”  
“Yeah. I doubt you’re in Goodneighbor for the scenery, MacCready agreed, hoping to get an answer out of her without prying. He still hadn’t figured out why she was here, right now and in his company. He doubted more and more that she really was in need of a mercenary.   
“We could leave, you know”, he pointed out, when he realized he probably wouldn’t get anything of value out of her.  
“Because it’s such a lovely evening for a moonlit stroll along the barricades.” Gale raised one eyebrow.  
MacCready smirked. “Nothing beats the scent of rancid tatoes in the urine soaked morning mist.”  
“He’s a poet and he didn’t know it.” Gale scratched her head and yawned, showed all those flawless pearly whites that almost made MacCready too self conscious to smile. She closed her mouth and blinked. “Yeah, you’re right. We should move this party elsewhere.”  
She rose from the floor with a light sway, stood still for a moment with one hand to her head.  
“Whoa…” With a surprised gasp and her arms and legs flailing - just like the last time they had met when she tried to escape the sofa - she fell backwards and landed in MacCready’s lap. His reflexes wasn’t fast enough to catch her, and his hands slid over her hips before he found the trench coat’s belt around her waist and grabbed it. By then, she was already sitting on top of him.   
“Wow, sorry. Did I hurt you?” Gale turned her head, the right half of her face hidden behind the wavy bangs, gave him a glazed but worried look. “That kicked in harder than expected…”   
“As if I haven’t heard that one before. ‘Woops, I’ve fallen’ is always so convincing”, MacCready gruffed as he tried to help her up, but instead he sank deeper into the groove between the sagging cushions and suddenly he was just as much a part of the pile of waving arms and legs as she was. This was a bit too close to be comfortable, his personal space invaded and he could almost feel his face turn red. “Hey lady, get your shit together.”  
“Easier said than done”, Gale muttered and jammed a pointy elbow in his diaphragm by mistake when she struggled to get up.  
“Ouff!” MacCready coughed. “Damn it!” Well, maybe he should be glad it wasn’t his nuts.   
This time.   
She did get up on her feet, however, but there was a stagger in her steps that made him fear for his future health and eventual heirs to a throne of nothing. To avoid any further mishaps, he steadied her with his arm around her waist as he hastily got out of the couch - although a bit too quickly, and stumbling. The room began to spin uncontrollably, and the arm he had held around Gale’s waist to keep her balanced turned into an embrace that almost had them both falling over.  
The room became uncomfortably silent at first, then Gale pushed away and gave him a mischievous gaze, albeit with an irritated crease between her eyebrows. Her face so close to his that he could feel her breath against his chin.   
“Cool your jets, tiger.” She murmured with a wry grin, “I haven’t even gathered my things yet.”  
It was probably meant as an ice-breaker, while at the same time a notion that he was crossing a line. MacCready understood that her comment was a teasing remark referring back to his own wisecrack, and let her go fast. He snickered, and noticed how his arms remembered the warmth of her, and this stupid life turned even more depressing than before. He stood there, drunk and so utterly lonely. This wasn’t Lucy, but through the back of his mind swept half whispered conversations with the promise of indiscretion ever hanging in the air, and suddenly he was very aware of her. Her perfect teeth, her perfect skin, grey eyes, piercing like steel, her whole appearance of carefree youth from a time without worries. That weird sense of fear and fascination that made butterflies flutter in his stomach. MacCready knew that it was the whiskey talking, that nothing of what moved through his mind at that moment would have been considered a clever idea in a sober state. He collected himself fast enough though and put his hands in his pockets.   
“A woman written in mystery is worth a curiosity trip”, he replied with a confidence in his posture and voice that he really didn’t have.  
“I could try to be more of a straight shooter, if you preferred”, she hummed with a grin and bent down to collect her things, “But I wouldn’t hit the bull’s-eye even if I tried.”  
“I bet you would if you wanted to”, MacCready said with a grin and followed her with his gaze as she slowly stood up again with the shoulder bag thrown over her back.   
Damn it, she’s the boss. You’re drunk, RJ. Stop it.  
“I mean, that scope on your rifle tells a different story”, he added, in an attempt to make it sound more neutral.  
“Yeah, it says that I’m great from a distance.” she stood up slowly and grabbed her rifle from the end of the couch. “And I’m not aiming at you.”  
“Ouch!” MacCready burst into laughter and dropped the subject. Relieved, actually. If she changed her mind, he wouldn’t be able to say no - at least not in this state. Sorry, Lucy - he could quite frankly find a super mutant attractive in this state.  
MacCready turned around to get his own things that he’d left in a pile beside the armchair across the room, but kept on jeering: “Damn, lady! You’re cold!”  
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how right you are”, Gale said and put the hat back on her head. “You know what, I think we’ll have to call this quits. I’m going home.”  
“Oh, yeah? She’s even got cold feet!” MacCready gave her a critical glare - not that she saw him, her back was turned. Sure, she sounded sober enough, but he knew she wasn’t. Fucking lightweight, by the way. One bottle of Whitey’s watered down vodka and she was waving like a flag in a storm. “Where’s home?”  
“Just outside Diamond City.” MacCready could see how her shoulders rose. Not comfortable telling me this, huh? He couldn’t help but wonder why; her route description hadn’t been very detailed. Outside of Diamond City, that could be anywhere. She would have to cross Boston Common and sneak past that behemoth Swan residing in Swan’s pond.  
“Diamond city? Yeah, right. Nope, won’t allow that. You’re drunk.” MacCready shook his head and threw his backpack over one shoulder and the rifle over the other. “Leaving the safety of Goodneighbor would be suicide, even if it’s daytime.”  
“Am no, thas a load of havering!” Gale snickered and swayed a little when she turned around to look at him. “Um, sorry. That’s what my uncles would have replied. You’re right, but the Rexford is full. Checked that earlier.”  
“Well…” MacCready inhaled and paused. Sure, he had a room, but he was not really in the charitable mood. Wouldn’t want that stranger rummaging around in his junk...   
Nah, not even like that - his room, his stuff, his private space. Things were awkward enough as it was because of a stupid slip.   
Well, what choice did he have? He wouldn’t be of much service either through that slurry of Super Mutants and Gunners out there - at least not with an askew aim - and he couldn’t let her go out there on her own, not like this.   
MacCready hesitated for a moment. “If you don’t mind the mess…”  
“I just need a place to crash for a couple of hours, do you really think I’d care about your dirty lingerie lying about?” Gale grinned widely, and all those white teeth made her look carnivorous. “Heh, you probably wear black silk and lace under that, don’t you?”  
“Come on, what does that have to do with anything?” MacCready walked ahead out of the V.I.P-section before he turned his head and added over his shoulder. “And for the record, it’s pink nylon. Who do you think I am; Skinny Malone? Silk is expensive.”


	4. Hanxiety and Beer Fear

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink already?” MacCready grumbled when the first thing Gale did as she entered his room was to open the whiskey bottle from before. Naturally, it was the first thing they saw, since he’d left it standing just inside the door where she moments later dropped her luggage.  
“Don’t you think you’re a bit of a hypocrite for saying that, Twelve-step?” Gale had a sip directly from the bottle without letting him out of her sight. She almost looked like she was challenging him. Cocky bastard.  
Well, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere. MacCready sighed.  
“Yeah, what is there to argue about. Let’s drink ourselves into a coma, as if I fucking care”, he murmured and dropped his bag and rifle on the floor in the middle of the room, “with a little luck, we’ll die from dehydration sometime around sundown. You take the bed, I can sleep on the couch.”  
Gale swallowed and grunted before she reached him the bottle. “That’s the spirit, kid.”  
MacCready snorted and grabbed the bottle. “Hey, weirdo, aren’t old people supposed to be good role models?”  
“Yeah, kids do as you do, not as you say.” Gale shrugged and threw herself on top of the bed with a sigh. “I might have a bad influence on you, you know.”  
“Hrmph.” MacCready drank. The whiskey didn’t have the same punch this time, but an involuntary shudder followed anyway. “Yeah, you’re real bad. Bad to the bone. Fucking princess.” A hiss slipped out of his mouth seconds later. Damn it. Sorry, Duncan.  
“Princess?” Gale laughed so hard she had to roll over to the side to catch her breath. “Oh, man. I‘ve been called a lot of things, but Princess - not since I was five. Hey, pass me that bottle, will ya?”  
She caught the closed whiskey bottle in one hand as MacCready passed it to her, and for some reason it wasn’t difficult to picture her as a five-year-old. If she’d grown up in Little Lamplight, she’d probably been one of those kids that always climbed on everything, she seemed to be the type. Scraped knees, maybe a chipped tooth. Yeah, she would have been far away from getting a punch in the face from him, that’s for sure, like a certain other ‘Princess’ he once had known.  
“Heh, daddy called you princess, huh?” MacCready took his coat and hat off and hung it over the bedpost. “You spoilt little brat. I bet you were a menace.”  
Gale snickered. “Is it that obvious? I have…” she paused and furrowed her brow before she continued. “...had three elder brothers. Robert, Richard and Peter… Rob, Dickie and Pete…” As her voice trailed off, the expression on her face became distant, but she kept smiling.  
“Rob...”, MacCready repeated. Robert. That was his first name too. A coincidence that made him feel haunted, as if she was talking about him. She wasn’t of course, but it might have been easier to just brush that feeling away, if Gale hadn’t been so easy to read at that moment. Three brothers, and she had lost them all. The Commonwealth was harsh; someone had to die if you wanted to survive. You just always wished it was someone else and not the ones you loved.  
MacCready cleared his throat and studied her face carefully. Sure, sadness, but this wasn’t a recent loss.  
“What happened to them? To Rob and...” what was the name of the rest of them?  
...Rupert? Roderick? No...  
Not that it mattered. They were apparently dead anyway.  
“They…” She met his gaze and looked like she was about to tell him about whatever it was that was moving through her head, but then she smiled. Another one of those carnivorous grins and one brow raised. “I lost them in a poker game.“  
And he knew straight away that she was lying. Not because it sounded too strange to be true - anything could happen in the Commonwealth - but because he noticed that she had a tell.  
“You really need to do something about that poker face, lady”, he replied with a snort.  
“Yeah, totally.” Gale had another sip from the bottle before MacCready grabbed it from her hand.  
“That twitch in your lower eyelid, for instance…” He put the bottle to his lips to drink, tipped his head backwards and filled his mouth while giving Gale a light punch in the shoulder - and moments later he remembered that this was not Whitey’s watered down junk. He swallowed fast and cleared his throat to avoid spitting it all out in a fit of coughing. Sure, his taste buds were numbed from hours of drinking, but that much at a time was almost making him retch.  
“Heheh, the twitch in… well, your entire body, for instance”, Gale replied and punched him back. “What do you say about a game of cards?”  
MacCready cleared his throat again, while nodding. “Strip Poker?” he suggested hoarsely and coughed.  
Gale burst into laughter. “Yeah, right. Your mom would approve, like never.”  
“That’s the thing”, MacCready pointed out and wiped away the tears that had begun to run down his cheeks. “You see, I don’t have a mom.”  
“Naaw, poor little orphan boy, he’s crying.” Gale made a clicking sound with her tongue.  
“Up yours.” MacCready looked up, met her gaze, then remembered that she was his paycheck. “With all due respect, of course.”

The taste of processed whiskey and cigarette smoke in his mouth slowly became more difficult to ignore. Somewhere between dreams and reality, a thought crawled through his head on all fours: he’d been drinking so much the night before that even his sweat would smell like a distillery, and he regretted it. The headache he expected hadn’t arrived to the party yet, but he knew it would - as soon as he sat up. Sadly, at some point, he had to. Bodily functions had that effect on people, and MacCready could kill for a cigarette right about now. Remembered vaguely that he’d been out of cigarettes at some point.  
Vaguely remembered a whole lot of things, actually.  
A rusty wheel chair and a tower full of super mutants, a pile of comic books and some old guy, talking like in one of those ancient radio shows.  
Too strange to make any sense. Better get this over with.  
He sat up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed. Wished he hadn’t seconds later when the first drumroll from an overly active percussionist made a rather violent act on his brain. He grunted and leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands. Damn it, he knew whiskey did a fucked up number on him, and still he drank that shit. A couple of years earlier he could have gone on like this for days like nothing, but some time after twenty every action left their marks. MacCready knew he shouldn’t feel as sorry for himself as he did - after all, this was his own damn fault.  
His tongue felt like sandpaper. Did he bring water, or did he forget to refill his resources?  
He lifted his head slowly and opened his eyes. The room was still spinning.  
Hungover and still drunk. What a fucking combo.  
And where the fuck… Ah, there. He reached for his duster and hat that he’d left hanging on the bedpost, moved slowly with the hopes that this at least would postpone the explosion of his skull for yet another couple of minutes. Put the hat on his head before his search for that pack of Grey Tortoise in the pockets of his duster began. He found the flip lighter first and dropped it on the bed, then he found the cigarettes - to his surprise, a new and very clean pack - and lit that first heavenly smoke of the day. It didn’t make much difference to his hangover, but at least it numbed his edge a little.  
The bed began to wobble. There was a short moment when MacCready was startled, almost reached for his rifle from old habit, but then he turned his head and looked back to the bed over his shoulder and remembered.  
The woman. Gale. The night and day before returned to him little by little through a haze. The new boss, or whatever he should call it. He shouldn’t drink in her company again, wouldn’t be good for the morale; and boy, they did stupid shit together when drunk. Weren’t they supposed to stay in and play a game of cards?  
Not good for his conscience either, when he came to think of it. Damn it, a set of fluttering eyelashes and he usually knew what to say, but this one turned him into a moron - she was a jerk and he just loved it. Or maybe it was the whiskey.  
Yeah, as mentioned before: whiskey made a fucked up number on him.  
He kept studying the woman though, couldn’t quite decide if she really looked as good as he remembered. She wasn’t as well groomed now, that was true. Her black hair spread out over the straw pillow, longer than he had imagined, but in a tangled mess.  
Without the trench coat over her clean black suit, she really looked like nothing at all. He couldn’t help but wonder how she had managed to survive on her own in Boston this far. That assault rifle of hers, how did she even manage to keep it upright long enough to aim with those scrawny arms?  
He returned to his cigarette. A moment of peace and quiet, a morning routine he needed to regain focus.  
The bed wobbled again when the woman beside him moved about with a grunt.  
“What the flogging clusterfuck did I do last night…” Her voice was nothing more but a hoarse whisper.  
Flogging clusterfuck. MacCready snorted. The words sounded natural in her mouth, but her proper articulation made it sound strange anyway.  
“Watered down vodka, whiskey and some bourbon”, he replied and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Oh, and a healthy dose of violence.”  
She became completely still the second he opened his mouth. A pause, within which MacCready took another drag from his smoke, then she spoke with a raspy voice.  
“You…! Did we…?”  
“Yeah, we fucked each other's brains out and then got fully dressed before we fell asleep. See the logic in that?” MacCready began to laugh, but the harsh sound coming out of his throat made his head feel like it was about to fall off and roll away. Yeah, she’d been pretty hammered last night. It wasn’t just him, luckily.  
The mattress quaked violently. A moment later she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, pinched the lit cigarette from his fingers and put it to her lips. A deep inhale, the sparkling sound of the dry tobacco glowing hot. She held her breath for a moment, then exhaled. “Go suck a sphincter, MacCready.”  
“Heh, sure. Your face looks like my ass.” MacCready gave her a curious glare. Her hair was an unkempt mess and her eyes red and runny. From the look of her furrowed brows he could imagine that she felt pretty much like he did.  
”Yeah, yeah. I get it.” Gale took another drag from the cigarette and let out a cloud of smoke. “I very much enjoy my own reflection, so... You’ve got a nice ass, Skinny-shins. There, I said it. Happy?” She turned her head and winked at him.  
MacCready chuckled and stole the cigarette back. “Don’t make me laugh, my brain will explode.”  
Gale moaned and leaned forward, rested her elbows on her knees. “Tell me about it. My head feels like I’ve trapped a Super Mutant - you know, one of those suiciders - inside my skull and he’s trying to break out together with the remains of my brain cells.”  
“I’d pay good caps to see that”, MacCready said with a grin before he tried to stand up. He realized kind of fast that it wasn’t one of his greater ideas. His stomach reacted like an acrobat on Jet and made flips so fast that he was about to throw up even though he hadn’t eaten anything since the noon before. Where was his backpack? He needed water. And something salty, like BlamCo Mac & Cheese, there should be a pack left in his bag.  
Ah, over there, by the door. Awesome; it could just as well have been on the other side of Boston. MacCready lurched across the room and had to kneel rather than crouch on the floor by the bag to avoid falling over. Great. Just great.  
“Hey, uh, would you like some…” MacCready rummaged around in his bag in the search for something edible, but the only thing he found was an old can that had lost its label “Mystery food?”  
He held up the rusted can and looked at Gale over his shoulder. Her face had turned light green.  
“Thank you, but I am not hungry”, she replied and swallowed.  
When MacCready opened the can and realised that it was Pork n’ Beans, he wasn’t particularly pleased either, but grabbed a spoon nonetheless and began to eat. Not his favourite, especially not when served cold - the texture was like chewing on lumps of snot. It would have been much better if he had heated it up first. Maybe some chipotle and salt…  
His train of thought was interrupted by Gale rushing through the room, slamming the door open and disappearing. MacCready stopped chewing for a moment and listened with his eyes pinned at the door that continued to swing on its hinges.  
He forced himself to swallow and shuddered. “Hey, lady, are you alright?”  
The sound of dry-heaving in the corridor outside answered his question.

They could have stayed in all day, because why not? They both felt like shit and it was a horrible day anyway. The rain was pouring and something told MacCready that this thunderstorm was about to turn radioactive any second.  
“Clean socks? Really?” He grunted and shook his head to get the droplets of water out of his ears. “You seriously think that clean socks are reason enough to go outside on a day like this?”  
“Pipe it, kid, or we’ll be detected by those super mutants over there.” Gale made a gesture towards a lit up building a bit further up along the road.  
“Which hardly answers my question”, MacCready muttered, but he readied his rifle and squinted through the rain. It was pouring heavily, and it was difficult to make out details from this distance, but he was almost certain that he could see three large shapes walking about on a ledge just ahead.  
“Heh, if we’re quick about it, we might be able to sneak past them, Gale whispered with a grin. “They appear to be busy arguing.”  
MacCready snorted. “Yeah, what would that be about? The probability of intelligent life in the universe?”  
“Heheh, yeah, or they’re discussing the latest book of Earnest Hemmingway. I bet they even have a book club.” Gale crouched and squinted too, with rainwater dripping from the tip of her nose.  
“Latest…?” MacCready moved forward with his back against the empty building on the other side of the road. “A blast from the past, or is Hemmingway alive and well, lives in Tucson?”  
“Watch out for that hole in the street…”  
Her warning came a bit late, and MacCready stepped knee deep into a large puddle with a loud splash. Gale cursed and disappeared into the shadows; MacCready almost felt his heart stop. Listened for a second before he began to move again. He should have remembered that hole, damn it.


End file.
